To Henry Watterson
9 October 1874 • Hartford, Conn.
(MS and transcript: DLC and Louisville Courier-Journal, 16 Oct 74,
UCCL 01136 and UCCL 13029)

Private

My Dear Mr. Watterson:1

I guess this is a woman who wrote me twice, some months ago, asking me to join her in dishing up an account of her adventures as a spy during the war. I declined wi twice,2 & tried to find a man to do the work for her—that is I recommended J. S. Bowman of San Francisco3 —& heard from her no

Private

more. She gave my friend Gen. M. Jeff Thompson as one of her references, but I can’t remember that he ever answered my letter about her.4

Of course if you have not only talked about her, & have not spoken of her as being a partner of mine in—literary or otherwise—you will not need to print this note [ of ] communication of mine. But if you have hitched our [in bottom margin: o[OVER]] names together in any way I wish you would either print my screed or drop me a line & tell me what I had better say in its place. You see I am wholly in the dark as to what it is you & the Register have said. Now I do not want the public defrauded in my name except when I do it myself—& not then, when I know it.

With remembrances & best wishes—

Ys Truly

S. L. Clemens

[enclosure:] 5

[To the Editor of the Courier-Journal.]

Farmington avenue, Hartford, Oct. 9.

Mr. Owen S. McKinney, of Palatine, West Virginia, writes to ask if I know “Mrs. E. H. Bonner, alias Harry Buford,” & says she exhibits documents purporting to come from me, [& ] also professes to be joint proprietor with me of “a book now in process of completion entitled Harry Buford’s Adventures During the War.”6

There is a large mistake here somewhere. I have not furnished documents of the above sort to anybody. I am not joint proprietor in any book with any woman.

My warrant for requesting you to deliver this word of warning to the public consists in the fact that one sentence in Mr. McKinney’s letter makes this reference: “Great prominence is given the lady by the Louisville Courier-Journal & the Mobile Register.” From this I infer that you have been imposed upon with the story of the joint book proprietorship, & hence I venture to offer you this correction of the error.7 Yours truly,

[Mark Twain].

Explanatory Notes | Textual Commentary

Editorial Signs

Click to add citation to My Citations.

1 Watterson, the editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, was a friend of Clemens’s, and a distant kinsman: see 8? Nov 74 to Watterson.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

2 Clemens referred to Mrs. E. H. Bonner (born Loreta Janeta Velazquez, in 1842), who had disguised herself as a Confederate officer during the Civil War and written an account of her adventures, which she hoped to publish. Bonner had written (CU-MARK):

UCLC32055

Click to add citation to My Citations.

Bonner’s claim to have met Clemens in the West cannot be true: according to her book (published in 1876), she did not go there until the late 1860s, after Clemens had left for the East (Velazquez, 586). For more about her book, see the next letter, n. 1.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

3 James F. Bowman (1826–82), a graduate of New York University and a lawyer, was a leading San Francisco journalist from 1858 until his death, working on a number of papers and editing the Californian from 1866 until its demise in 1868. Bowman was one of Clemens’s early boosters, publishing his work, lauding his Sacramento Union letters in the Californian, and, under the pen name “Frisco,” giving the Oakland News an appreciative review of his first Sandwich Islands lecture, in San Francisco on 2 October 1866. Clemens had last seen Bowman in the spring of 1868, while in San Francisco to negotiate with the owners of the Alta California for the right to use his Holy Land letters in The Innocents Abroad (“Death of a Notable Journalist,” San Francisco Examiner, 30 Apr 82, 4; Walker 1969, 179–80; “Jottings from over the Bay,” Oakland News, 5 Oct 66, 2; L2, 30 n. 1, 206–7; ET&S1, 43–44, 540).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

4 Bonner is not mentioned in any surviving correspondence with Thompson.

Click to add citation to My Citations.

5 The manuscript of the enclosure is not known to survive. The text is supplied here from Clemens’s clipping from the Louisville Courier-Journal of 16 October 1874, doubtless sent by Watterson. Clemens inscribed it “Louisville Courier-Journal
S. L. Clemens” (“A Card from Mark Twain,” 2, clipping in CU-MARK).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

6 McKinney had written (CU-MARK):

UCLC32057

Click to add citation to My Citations.

McKinney’s language suggests that he may have been a journalist or printer (“one of the craft”); his connection with the Marion Machine Works has not been explained. The source of the documents Bonner showed him, with the “printed heads” of Clemens’s publisher, conceivably was Thomas Belknap, who in 1876 would publish her book, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and Travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velazquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate States Army (Velazquez). Belknap was one of the founders, in 1865, of the American Publishing Company, and an independent publisher as well. His direct connection to the American Publishing Company had ended by 1870, but by 1871 he was associated with Francis C. Bliss, the brother of Elisha Bliss, in a subsidiary, Belknap and Bliss. That association ended by 1872, and Belknap was again an independent publisher, with no declared connection to the Blisses. By 1875 he had joined two other apparently independent houses which shared an address with the American Publishing Company and another of its known subsidiaries, the Columbian Book Company. Although the firms were now at 284 rather than 116 Asylum Street, they had not moved: in the spring of 1874 Asylum and seventeen other Hartford streets were renumbered (Trumbull, 1:624; “Hartford Residents,” Bliss family, 1; Geer: 1869, 423, 495; 1870, 435, 507; 1871, 123, 226, 282; 1873, 291; 1874, 6, 227; 1875, 227, 295; L4, 217 n. 2, 449 n. 2).

Click to add citation to My Citations.

7 On 31 August 1874 the Louisville Courier-Journal had published a lengthy account of the adventures of Bonner as a Confederate soldier (“A Confederate Amazon,” 1, reprinting “An Adventurous Lady,” Mobile [Ala.] Register, 25 Aug 74, 1). Although the article noted that Bonner was writing a book about her experiences, it did not report a claim that Mark Twain was her collaborator, or otherwise mention him. Clemens might have sent a “word of warning” to the Register as well as the Courier-Journal, but no such letter has been found in the Mobile newspaper. The Courier-Journal published additional pieces about Bonner on 6 and 7 September 1874 (“An Interesting Visitor,” 4; “Arnold’s Difficulty,” 4), but neither mentioned Mark Twain. For Bonner’s belated response to Clemens’s disclaimer, see the next letter, n. 2.

Description of Texts and Provenance

Source text(s):

MS, Henry Watterson Collection, Library of Congress (DLC), is copy-text for the letter. “A Card from Mark Twain,” Louisville Courier-Journal, 16 Oct 74, 2, is the source for the enclosure. Copy-text is a clipping in the Mark Twain Papers, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, with Clemens’s handwriting on it (CU-MARK; see 9 Oct 74 to Watterson, n. 5).

Previous publication: L6, 250–53.

Emendations and textual notes: MS is copy-text for ‘Private . . . Clemens’ (250.1–251.16) Courier-Journal is copy-text for ‘[To . . . Twain.’ (251.18–35)

of • [‘f’ partly formed]

OVER • [capitals simulated, not underscored]

& • and [here and hereafter]

Mark Twain • MARK TWAIN